So, you've heard that the Baking Steel is a pizza stone made from ultra-conductive steel but you may be wondering what that actually means. How is the Baking Steel different from your pizza stone?

Nathan Myhrvold, of Modernist Cuisine (you know, the 6 volume, 2,438 page cookbook that won two James Beard Award's...yes, that Modernist Cuisine) well, back in 2011 Nathan was interviewed for an article in the Wall Street Journal, it was here that he mentioned, the closest a home chef can come to achieving Neapolitan style pizza, is by using steel.

But I have a stone, not steel, and my pizzas come out pretty good? Sure, I don't doubt you but the best results will come from steel. We can't argue with science.

Think of it this way: if you were to walk on a outdoor ceramic patio on a hot day, when the sun is beaming down, you wouldn't burn your feet. The heat transfer between the ceramic material and your feet would be pretty slow. (Slow enough that it wouldn't scorch you, anyway). However, if you tried doing the same thing with steel, you'd probably end up with some pretty severe burns-this is because steel transfers heat 18x faster than ceramic.

So, steel moves heat faster than ceramic and sure, it would scorch the bee-jezus out of my feet, but how does that improve my pizza game?

To put it simply, the faster the heat transfer, the crispier the crust. A true Neapolitan pizza is made in a 900 degree oven, taking only a mere 60-90 seconds to cook. So, the longer your stone takes to cook your pizza, the further you are getting from the crispy, charred crust of a classic Neapolitan pie.

But home ovens typically max out at 500 degrees, so, I assume there is no way I can compete with a 900 degree oven, right? Wrong. It is a scientific fact that steel conducts heat better than stone and because steel conducts, retains and transfers heat better than any other material, it can cook your pizza faster than a stone, even when in lower temperatures.

This all sounds great, but your still not sold? Well, what if I told you...